School of Nursing expanding

The UTRGV School of Nursing will have a new building in Pharr that is scheduled to open in Fall 2023 with the aim of increasing enrollment.
Construction is scheduled to begin at 2800 N. Cage Blvd. in January or February of next year and is expected to be completed by June 2023, said Marta Salinas-Hovar, associate vice president for facilities planning and operations.
“The gross square footage of the proposed new building will be 52,613 gross square feet,” Salinas-Hovar said. “It’s going to be a two-story building.”
The City of Pharr, which is leading the project, will pay for the construction of the facility and then lease it to UTRGV for about 25 years, she said.
D. Wilson Construction of McAllen is the contractor that has been selected by the city.
MaryJane Lewitt, interim dean for the School of Nursing, said, on average, there are about 200 students enrolled in the upper-division undergraduate nursing programs and an additional 100 students enrolled in the graduate programs.
“For those of you who are in nursing or thinking about going into nursing or nursing practice, this is going to be a great facility to learn in and to get real-life experiences in, to prepare you for your profession,” Salinas-Hovar said.
A signing of the agreement between the City of Pharr and UTRGV took place Sept. 2 at the site.

“I think it is a good way to have a more independent structure for, like, a baseline,” junior nursing major Samantha Avila said when asked about the expansion.
Although Avila expects to graduate before the facility is completed, she said it will be helpful because students will not have to go to a hospital or a different facility to access resources that are available to students at UTRGV.
“This was kind of born out of an extremely positive working relationship between [UTRGV President Guy] Bailey and the mayor of Pharr,” Lewitt said. “The two of them are looking at different options for being able to, No. 1, meet the needs of students here at UTRGV. But also, from [Mayor Ambrosio Hernandez’s] point of view, he would really like to see an expansion of health care and health care access for the residents of his county and
his city.”
The Rio Grande Valley is experiencing a significant shortage of nurses across all the counties that make up the Valley, Lewitt said.
“According to the Texas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies, we are short approximately 6,000 nurses, currently, and that shortage is not projected to decrease through 2032,” she said.
The goal for the new facility is to enroll more students, hire more faculty, and have additional clinical contracts for students across all of the hospitals of the Valley, Lewitt said.
“The ability to expand enrollment is based upon a few different factors–space definitely being one of them,” she said. “The other two are availability of appropriate clinical sites in the community and the availability of knowledgeable faculty. This new building will allow us to address the first issue, space … which gives us a big opportunity to move forward and address the other two.”
Lewitt said the new facility will be completely state of the art.
“We have, I believe, six classrooms for the undergraduate program and three more classrooms for the graduate program,” she said. “Plus, those full state-of-the-art simulation center and skills lab for our undergraduate students and a full state-of-the-art simulation and skills lab along with a clinic … for the graduate program.”
Lewitt said faculty from the Edinburg campus will relocate to the new building in Pharr, but the university will still maintain its nursing programs on the Brownsville campus.
“A new building is always an amazing thing for both students and for faculty,” she said. “And this is a moment of joy, but this is also a moment to recognize the fact that our community and our university is extremely supportive of nurses, not only nursing students but nurses across the entire Valley.”